Saturday, July 25, 2015

A couple of weeks ago, Diane, my long-arm girl, finished quilting three of my quilts. It's like Christmas to me to pick up a quilt from Diane to see the magic that she does with her long-arm. Binding a quilt is still time-consuming. I sew by machine the binding onto the quilt and then I handstitch it into place.

The quilt above is from my favorite quilt pattern company at the moment, Madison Cottage. It is called "Crushed Pistachio" and the fabric was a kit from Bear Patching Quilt Quilting in White Bear Lake, MN which also happens to be my local quilt shop. I wasn't intending on making any extra quilts besides the ones that I was already committed to but when you are buying fabric and you see these gorgeous quilts on the walls with kits located nearby, I have only so much willpower. Or you could say that I have little to no willpower while in a quilt shop.

I also saw this quilt at the same shop by Madison Cottage. This quilt pattern is called "Mango Parfait." It too was a kit and it turned out so beautiful. I love to buy kits because I don't have a large stash and when you need lots of different colors, it can be difficult to put it all together. I have really enjoyed the kits that I have made.

This quilt is called "Tumbled" by Sunnyside Designs. This was also a kit and you can find it here. This quilt is actually what started my quilting obsession, I mean binge. My son and his new wife are expecting their first baby in November and I wanted to make a quilt for the little one. When I bought the kit, I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl but now we know that that they are expecting a little boy.

The saga of Rocketman and the kidney stone continues. When he went to his urologist, he found out that he had two additional kidney stones still in the kidney. This came as a surprise to us since the ER doctor failed to mention that. The urologist will probably be removing them in the next month since Rocketman does travel to Asia occasionally and a kidney stone is not what you want to experience in China or South Korea.

He also wants to figure out why all of a sudden Rocketman is developing these stones. So he is spending 48 hours this weekend collecting all his urine to be analyzed to hopefully determine a treatment or what preventative care we can do.

Now that I am waiting for more quilts to be finished, I find myself trying to figure out what I want to work on next. It's not like I have nothing to do because we crafters ALWAYS have things we could do. I am writing a children's e-book which we will self publish. I will not only write the book but also illustrate it with simple watercolor pictures. I also want to begin some hanji projects too. But I could at any time get an email from Diane saying more quilts are finished and ready to be picked up. Welcome to the life of The Constant Crafter.

Monday, July 13, 2015

The infrequency of my blog postings is due to many things. I've been spending my days quilting which is a time consuming endeavor and I'm loving every minute of it. I'm pretty active on Facebook and Instagram. As far as the status of my blog, it will ebb and flow along with my life.

The photo above is some garakji maedeup I was working on while spending time in the Emergency Room with Rocketman. Maedeup is still the greatest thing to take away nervous energy if you ever end up like myself waiting in the ER. I always have something ready to grab at a moment's notice.

Now the reason I was sitting in the emergency room. Rocketman had been having some lower back pain all week that would come and go. Nothing sharp or long lasting but it became more worrisome as the weekend came. I made an appointment with our doctor for Monday (today) to get to the bottom of it.

But by Saturday evening it became apparent he couldn't wait until Monday. So we went to the Emergency Room. We were happy to find it pretty empty and the wait was pretty short. It's funny we both noticed that the beds in the ER are not much longer than the ones we encountered in the emergency rooms in Korea.

We told them we suspected a kidney stone and that this wasn't our first rodeo. They gave him some pain medication and he had a CT which showed a 4 x 5 x 6mm kidney stone right next to the bladder. The physician consulted with Rocketman's urologist and we were sent home with pain medication and to follow up with the urologist.

We arrived around 6:30pm and were released around 12:30 am. Rocketman's pain level when we arrived was an 8 and a 0 when we left. We found a nearby 24 hour Walgreens to get the script filled and arrived home after 1 am.

I would like to say Rocketman took it easy on Sunday but the opposite was true. He worked in the yard with 100 degree heat index. We went out to lunch, then to Home Depot and finally to Sears where he bought a large tool chest (almost taller than me). Then he had to make a second trip back to Sears to pick up the second tool chest box. He spent the rest of the afternoon putting the chest together in our horribly humid garage.

It was after 10 pm and I was already in bed reading when he came out of the bathroom saying, "I think I passed the stone." Just like that. I jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom to see it in the strainer the hospital sent us home with. It passed with no pain. Thank goodness.

Now he just has to visit his urologist with the stone to make sure everything is really okay. And that was our weekend. How as yours?

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

I can't believe it is almost July! We have been so busy but having a blast. We had the grandboys for four days when momma and papa went camping. The three boys kept us on our toes but we had a blast. This is Ezra and Judah riding the trike I rode as a child.

I also finished scanning thousands of photos for my parents. It was fun to revisit the past. This photo cracked up my dad. That is me in the photo and his attempt to grow grass at our first house. He used a spreader for the grass seed and didn't realize at the time that it was plugged hence the plugs of grass instead of a lush lawn.

I'm still quilting away and I really need to get outside and pull some weeds. They always seem to reappear. My grandfather would spend hours and hours in his garden while I sat and watched. He loved it and so does my daughter. I didn't inherit that gene.

Friday, June 19, 2015

The quilting splurge started with a new daughter-in-law and continued with a baby due in the Fall. I hadn't made a quilt for over five years so I guess I was due. The photo above is a double Irish chain for our new daughter-in-law. She wanted red and loved the double Irish chain. It was so funny because that is the pattern I chose to make my first quilt way back in 1980 when I started quilting.

That was before I had a rotary cutter and I gave up because it was just too difficult for me to do it. I did take a lot of quilting classes and learned a lot. But when the rotary cutter was invented that changed my whole world and made quilting a whole lot easier.

I never did make myself a double Irish chain so I thought it was a great time to remedy that.

This quilt has one of my favorite color combinations and will look great with the bojagi curtains I made.

I was visiting my local quilt store, Bear Patch Quilting all the time and those naughty people have the walls covered with beautiful quilts. What makes it naughty is they have kits so that you can make the same thing. The photo above is one of those kits I bought.

I became addicted to the quilt patterns by Madison Cottage Design. Their quilts are gorgeous and the instructions are easy to follow. You can also find kits online. The photo above is also a kit with the pattern from Madison Cottage.

I contacted my long-arm girl and she was booked until June. She emailed last week to see if I had any quilts ready for her and I dropped off a bunch. I can't wait to see what she does with them. I have three more left to do and I will be done for the foreseeable future. So if you want me, I'll be in my crafting room where the iron is hot and the sewing machine is humming.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Abstract Art and Modernism were the next sections we visited. I've never been a big fan of either but it was still fun to look. I remember in grade school I went on a field trip to The Art Institute of Chicago. The only thing I remember is this plastic blue square made by a famous artist. I looked at it with the mind of a 11 - 12 year old and thought, really? This is art. I could have made it.

This one I didn't get at all. To me it was just a bunch of scribbles.

This guy was pretty cool.

Then it was onto the furniture section. It was pretty cool.

Then to centuries gone by.

We had a great time and I wanted to eat lunch at The Wienery in Minneapolis. We found it easily but parking was another story. We could not find a place to park anywhere so we passed.

Tomorrow, I pick up the grandboys who will be spending four days with us while Mommy and Daddy go camping. I loaded up on food and I'm planning on taking them to the Red Balloon in St. Paul on Friday.